More and more couples seem to be going the DIY wedding route when it comes to their special day.
Some want to save a little money, some want to be more involved in their wedding, or some have a certain plan they want to follow and DIY is the only way for them to do that.
There are many things you might want to think about before you decide to go the DIY route for your wedding.
You will want to think about why you want to DIY the project, how much money it will save or cost you, how much time it will take, whether you actually have the time to complete the project, and if you are even creative enough to do it.
The last part is what stopped me from DIYing too much for my wedding because I know I’m not creative enough.
I often have Pinterest fails when I try to DIY so I knew for a fact that many ideas I found online would look like garbage if I tried to attempt to do the same. Oh well, at least I am honest with myself! 🙂
There are many different areas you can DIY with a wedding. You can have a DIY wedding dress, DIY bridesmaid dress, DIY wedding invitations, DIY wedding hairstyle, DIY wedding desserts, DIY wedding cake toppers, DIY wedding bouquets, and more.
Below are some of the different areas you may be thinking about DIYing for your wedding:
Outdoor Wedding On Private Property.
Okay, so this isn’t exactly a DIY, but having an outdoor wedding on private property does mean you have to do everything yourself. It can be a DIY wedding nightmare or a DIY wedding dream.
We had to plan the event rentals (such as tent, tables, chairs, linens, dance floors, etc.), weather backup plans, maintaining the property, coordinating everyone and everything, planning the best times for everything, setup and locations of everything, the bathroom situation, and more.
There are a TON of things to think about when having an outdoor wedding. All things wedding related will be the only thing on your wedding. We ended up hiring a wedding coordinator to help us with everything because the stress was mounting quickly and I didn’t want to forget anything important.
I think having an outdoor wedding on private property is more about having the wedding you want because you can usually have everything your own specific way. We were able to choose our own event rental company, caterer, coordinator, music, and more.
Usually an outdoor wedding is not a way to save money, so having a DIY wedding for that sole reason may not work out for you.
I don’t regret our wedding at all. It was a great day and we still have people telling us that it was the best wedding ever.
It was a TON of stress though planning everything for the amount of people we had. I also knew that having an outdoor wedding wouldn’t mean we would save money. The amount of people we had come up to us (during the planning process) asking if we were too poor to have a “real wedding” was ridiculous!
DIY Wedding Invitations.
We did not DIY our wedding invitations. I calculated the possible cost savings, and it was very minimal for us. After calculating the time and money, I decided it wasn’t worth it for us.
Instead, I found an awesome website called PaperStyle that has many affordable invitations on it. They do have expensive invitations on there as well, but we found ones that we loved for cheap.
Our invitations, including envelopes and our address stamped on each one, cost around $160 altogether, which was equivalent to the cost of making them ourselves in the style I wanted.
I know that many DIY their wedding invitations but it just wasn’t for us.
DIY Wedding Flowers.
We DIYed our wedding flowers and saved a decent amount of money by using FiftyFlowers. I can’t remember the exact amount we paid, but I believe we paid around $350 for over 2,000 flowers. We were able to save so much because we used discounts, bought at cheaper times, and they accidentally messed up the address on one of our orders and gave us a 50% discount.
The address mix up was where they sent the flowers to the wrong address (my home instead of the wedding location). It wasn’t a big mix up, but I did have to have someone drive 1.5 hours to make sure the flowers didn’t die.
FiftyFlowers gladly refunded 50% of my money for the mix up without any questions asked. Their customer service is great and they apologized for the mix up. My tip to avoid this is to confirm the address with them after you book.
I looked at many different wedding flower wholesale websites, and FiftyFlowers won hands down for me for many reasons. They had many, MANY flowers available, they have flower combo packs, you can choose flowers by wedding color, and more.
Another big reason is because FiftyFlowers has someone there who helps you choose your wedding flowers for you depending on the theme and colors of your wedding. This was awesome and it was nice having that help. She gave me different flower suggestions and she also helped me choose flowers that would do well sitting outside during a HOT and HUMID summer wedding.
You might be wondering “But I always kill flowers!”
Fifty Flowers has a really easy to use guidebook on how to take care of your flowers once you receive them. I didn’t kill any flowers and I am a known plant killer. I was afraid of the same thing but I didn’t have any problems.
Arranging the wedding flowers was a lot of fun too. My bridesmaids and I all got together the day before the wedding and arranged them. It wasn’t stressful at all and it as a lot of fun.
DIY Wedding Lighting.
The place where we rented our wedding supplies (tent, tables, decorations, dance floors, etc.) also offered to hang up the lighting for our wedding. We said no to this because like with all of the other even rental companies in the area, they charged $0.75 per FOOT. Considering we had hundreds of feet of lighting to hang, that price just seemed insane.
This is something I do not regret doing myself at all.
We hit up Target right after Christmas and bought a bunch of Philips Christmas outdoor lights for something around 75% off. These were supposed to be the best lights out there, but sadly they only lasted about an hour and then everything died. I’m not sure what happened but I was extremely upset since we hung it all up and they all went out.
Luckily we still had backup lighting. We got the rest of our lighting from the Paper Lantern Store (affiliate link, but I only joined their affiliate program because I liked their products), and surprisingly those worked the best. Not a single one of those lights went out!
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We made our wedding invitations using PaperStyle which my wife recommended. It was really good because lots of beautiful templates are available. We also had our wedding held in a private property owned by my boss so we were thankful that we received discounts. It was really stressful but very fulfilling once it went as planned.
Sounds great Jayson! That is so nice of your boss as well.
i could not afford anything for a wedding, parents could not pay anything towards it, as well; no big deal.
Yes, no big deal. It’s all about the marriage, not the actual wedding.
Honestly I think that DIY could help you save money but is true it depends how time you have and how it could affact your finances, depends also fo the kind of event you’re going to organize, DIY is ok for small and intimate ceremony. If you’re going to invite at least 100 people is better to limit DIY!!!
Yeah that’s why we didn’t DIY a ton of stuff. We had around 250 people and it would have been a lot of work!
If you have the time I think DIY is always the most affordable route. Wedding vendors charge ridiculous rates (at least in my experience) so there is a big premium for the convenience of NOT going the DIY route. We did a lot of DIY for our wedding, though I admit my wife did most of the work 😉
Yes, I agree!
We DIYed our invitations, our centerpieces and most of the decorating at church and the reception venue. This saved as a fairly large amount. We did not DIY the flowers since we used a local lady that my grandmother knew very very well and she gave us quite the hook up.
Good job on saving money!
I’m impressed that you DIY-ed your flowers! I am the worst at crafts of any kind and at art, so we tried not to DIY too much of our wedding. I found super cheap vendors and just eliminated anything unnecessary.
I did make our programs and place-setting cards myself, which was nearly disastrous. I had this complicated ribbon-tying idea that I wanted for the programs, which didn’t exactly pan out. We just sort of knotted them together and they looked fine. I agree with you–DIY does not always save money (or time!)!
I was a little scared to DIY the flowers, but it turned out to be a ton of fun!
I DIYd so much at my wedding and it was great. I did my flowers too, which was fun but I didn’t use a wholesaler….wish I would have! We also had an outdoor wedding at one of our friends’s lake houses, so we had a practically free venue which was perfect. I would definitely do it again!
Your wedding sounds wonderful!
I was not into my wedding at all so my mom did a lot of DIY stuff for it. She created a fancy wedding cake out of three sheet cakes from Walmart and she did all of our flowers. She also made our invitations! I wouldn’t have done it myself but she did a really good job. She’s really crafty =)
Sounds awesome!
I don’t know that I would personally want to DIY, but I think I’d use my wedding party to help out. Rather than spending money on wedding shower and bachelorette party stuff, I think it would fun to use those events to prep wedding stuff like invites or centerpieces. Just some glue sticks and a lots of wine 🙂
Yeah we mainly DIYed just so I could get the specific look I wanted. Like with choosing the private property as our wedding location – I knew there was no other wedding venue in the STL area that was as pretty, so we chose that hands down!
We did photo invitations, people loved them, and they only cost $0.30/card including the postage!
That’s awesome!
We made our own wedding invitations since my husband used to design different invitations. We had a garden wedding before,my relatives helped us to design the place and they did our flower arrangement. My two professional singer friends volunteered to sing our wedding songs.
Wow sounds lovely! 🙂
well you will only get married once and i think it’s really worth your money 🙂
Haha thanks Raymond 🙂
We did not DIY near as much as we should for our wedding, but that was 11 years ago, back when I was still making stupid financial choices. The one thing we did do was fill our mini bubble bottles. We ordered 200 online and when we got them, the bubble material was the consistency of body wash and didn’t blow anything, so we went to Toys R Us, bought a huge bottle of bubbles and filled 200 bottles with a turkey baster. Hubby did that while I tied ribbons on the bottles. The whole process took us HOURS, but we had fun and drank lots of wine along the way. We still laugh about the bubble project.
Haha sounds like a lot of fun!
We did our own programs for our wedding, simple and inexpensive!
Wow good job!
Flowers are what really worries me about the day I have to plan a wedding. They are so expensive! Thanks for the info- I will check out that website you used 🙂
Yes, I would definitely check out FiftyFlowers. We had a TON of flowers leftover too, so I’m sure we could have saved even more money.